


united we stand (divided we fall)

by xSparklingRavenx



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Death, Friendship, Gen, This has been done so much I'm sorry for adding another one to the pile, Time Loop AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xSparklingRavenx/pseuds/xSparklingRavenx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He thinks through the meaning of the phrase. United we stand. If we stay together, we’ll be alright. Divided we fall. If we lose each other, we’re done."</p><p>Jean lives through the years leading up to Marco's death again and again, trying to find someway to change it, someway to stop it. Inspired by barleytea's time loop AU over on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	united we stand (divided we fall)

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago actually, but only just got around to posting it! I probably should get back to the MMORPG fic, but life and school have been draining me on that one haha. As mentioned in the summary, this was inspired by barleytea's amazing art on tumblr! Go and check it out!
> 
> Also, it's worth mentioning that this is probably a little based on headcanon, considering we don't really know the circumstances of Marco's death in detail. Also the whole 'live together die alone' thing is something I heard from Lost and I thought was really pretty. You can also find this over at my tumblr! I'm under the url as my username here : )

The body is ruined, half missing, rotting, grotesque. If Jean Kirschstein had been anyone else, maybe Connie or Sasha for example, he'd probably find himself doubled over on the floor, throwing the contents of his mostly-empty stomach onto the pavement. If he was someone else he'd be halfway between crying and numb, his emotions quelled with shock. If he was someone else, everything might be different. But he's not. He's Jean Kirschstein and he's standing in front of a ruined, half missing, rotting and grotesque body, the body of his comrade, no, the body of a friend. No. That's still not right, that's still not the right way to describe him.

"Cadet! Do you know his name?" the woman with dead eyes asks, her clipboard clutched tight in her white knuckled, clammy hands. Jean remembers a time when he'd stopped short at the sight, not able to process the body in front of him and unable to register what the woman was saying. He'd called out numbly to someone, _anyone,_ begging them to tell him _his_ last moments. The smell now is exactly the same, the stench of blood and death. The sounds are identical, the harsh silence of horror, the dull footsteps of the empty shells of soldiers, all doing their best to keep it together as they recover bodies - or none at all, and maybe that's worse. Everything is as it always is, nothing has changed.

But Jean has. He doesn't look at the body with eyes that are new to death and destruction, that have never seen the horrors of war and the devastation the titans bring. Instead he looks on with eyes that are tired and broken, that have seen far too much, and he averts his gaze when it hits him just how _much_ he's failed this time. The woman questions him again and he turns to face her with a heavy heart. This is it. The confluence between his past and his present.

"The 104th Training Corps..." he tells her, his voice surprisingly steady. "Leader of Squad 19, Marco Bodt."

The moment the words fall from his mouth in their slow crescendo a wave of light-headedness drifts over him. He's expecting it, but it still makes him stagger, tripping over his own legs. "Cadet?" the woman says, slightly alarmed, but the sensation assaults him again and again and as he steps back his legs go out from under him and he _falls._

The world stutters and jerks like a video tape on rewind. He sees carnage and ruin rewound before his eyes, he watches buildings form again and he sees people who are dead smiling and laughing. He shuts his eyes, lets the world take him.

He doesn't hit the ground.

 

_~x~_

He opens his eyes and he's staring at a familiar ceiling in a familiar bed, in a familiar room listening to familiar sounds. If he sits up and chooses to peer over the side of his bunk, he'll see Eren Jaeger snoring loudly on his bunk and Armin Arlert below him, clutching his pillow. Their features will be childlike, younger, smaller. Instead, Jean leans over the edge of the bunk to look at the bed directly below him. Comfortingly, sickeningly, Marco too is asleep there, his freckles an unmarred constellation across his face.

Once, he'd woken and thought everything had been a dream. Oh, how wrong had he been.

"Marco," the name slips from his mouth, maybe too loudly. The other boy stirs, opens his eyes. Two eyes, how they should be.

"Jean?" he says sleepily. "What are you doing...?"

Jean stares, wonders again if maybe all of it was a dream, Trost never happened, he hasn't made it that far yet. But he wonders that every time, wishes and hopes, and it's never true. His limbs are shorter, he feels younger. Such an oxymoron, that. How many times has he repeated this now? Surely he should feel so much older. Why doesn't he feel as relieved as he should, looking at Marco now? Is he tired? Tired of it all? How selfish of him.

"Jean?"

The sound of his name from Marco's lips forces him from his trance. He blinks slowly, takes in the sight of his best friend who isn't really his best friend yet, and shakes his head.

"Nothing." he says, and returns to his bed. Shivers run up and down his spine. How many times, he asks himself, has he returned here only to fail again? Is it useless? He has to wonder.

He doesn't want to join the Military Police anymore, doesn't care about what ranking he gets in class. He doesn't fight with Eren over petty things anymore, he doesn't try and distort others view on the world. Some would say he's changed overnight, that that only yesterday he was a self-centred, arrogant little boy.

What they don't understand is that he's become more selfish than ever before.

 

_~x~_

He drifts through class, through training, through it all without thinking. The others don't understand. How is he so proficient with the manoeuvre gear? Why does he already know the answers in tactical training before they've been taught? The old version of him would revel in it all, the attention and the glory of knowing it all.

Sometimes, he thinks being the old Jean Kirschstein would be far easier.

He sits with Marco in the mess hall, trying to teach him everything before he'll ever need to know it. The ins and outs of the manoeuvre gear, how to efficiently dispatch a titan. He goes over and over it with an unsettling desperation. Maybe if Marco knows it earlier, he'll get better at it and maybe he'll _survive._

Marco doesn't understand. "We'll get taught this in class, right?"

"But it's better if you know it now!"

"You're really serious about this, huh?" Marco laughs, taking a drink. "I'm kind of impressed. You're so dedicated. You could be a commander, I bet. Is that what you want?"

Those words, while pretty, mean nothing, not when he's trapped in a never ending time loop because he's a _fuck up_ and that's all he's ever going to be. "I don't want you to die alone," he blurts, and then he realises what he's said and he kicks himself, because oh _god_ that sounds so ridiculous.

Marco stares at him, frowning. "What?"

"I...never mind, forget it."

Marco leans closer. "Jean, are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Jean snaps without thinking, and then feels utterly ashamed. He takes a deep breath in before trying again. "Agh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

Marco looks at him for a long time, as if deciding what to say. This is new, and Jean doesn't take well to unfamiliar situations that have already played out differently. He starts to clear away his dishes, standing up, when Marco grabs his sleeve. "Huh?"

"We live together and we die alone." Marco says slowly, thoughtfully. Jean doesn't understand, can't understand the meaning of his words. They sound ridiculous in his mind, which only dictates that to die alone is unimaginable and he can't _stand_ the thought. He opens his mouth to tell him so, but Marco carries on. "We enter this world alone, and that's how we leave it Jean. But, if you want, I won't let it come to that."

Jean places the plates down, touches Marco's hand on his sleeve. "I'll hold you to that." he whispers, before taking his hand away and turning his back. "I think dying is stupid anyway."

Marco laughs, and Jean smiles for the first time in a long while. There's still hope for him, he thinks, and maybe, he's not entirely selfish after all.

 

_~x~_

"Cadet! Do you know his name?"

Jean stares at the ruined, half missing, rotting, grotesque body in front of him. How many times? Five, six? Six. Six entire times and he still hasn't managed to find the root of Marco's death and pull it from the ground before it sprouts. He tried, tried to stay with him, not let him out of his sight. It didn't work, it never does.

"You went back on your word." he says brokenly. "You said it wouldn't come to that. _'Live together, die alone'._ " tears well up in his eyes. "You _said_ it wouldn't come to that!"

"If you know his name, you need to tell me."

Jean turns to her. For one disgusting, dreadful moment he thinks of saying something different, to maybe end this cycle of death and death. He gasps. He would never be able to live with himself. Not ever.

"The 104th Training Corps..." he tells her, his voice shaking and cracking. "Leader of Squad 19, Marco Bodt."

The wave washes over him and drags him under. The world stutters and jerks. It rewinds again.

 

_~x~_

"We live together and we die alone." Marco says slowly, thoughtfully. Jean grits his teeth. "We enter this world alone, and that's how we leave-"

"Bullshit!" Jean interrupts, knocking over a glass in fury. Others turn their heads to look. He can feel Jaeger's eyes on him but he is far past caring. "That's bullshit and we both know it! You're going to say you won't let it come to that? You _can't_ know how it's going to happen out on the battlefield, no one _does!_ That's why people die, because for once fleeting moment you think you're fucking _invincible_ and you can get away from the titans but then it grabs you and that's _it._ "

He's breathing heavily, half mortified at his own outburst and half furious with himself for losing his temper. Marco stares at him, seemingly unknowing how to react. "What's up with you, Kirschstein?" Eren asks, sounding genuinely confused, his tone tinted with a hint of anger. "Marco didn't do anything to you, so why are you screaming at him?"

"It's okay," Marco says before Jean can explain himself. He takes Jean by his arm and drags him to the corner of the mess hall and he asks, "Jean, are you alright? You've seemed really off lately."

Jean breathes out, lets the anger and upset roll away like tumbleweed. "Sorry," he says weakly. "I don't know what came over me."

"You don't want to die, right?" Marco says. "Are you scared?"

Jean bites his lip. "Yeah," he says.

 _But not for myself,_ he adds silently.

 

_~x~_

 

"Cadet! Do you know his name?"

Jean runs on autopilot. Why is it so damn hard to keep him in his sights? Why can't he succeed?

"The 104th Training Corps..." he says. "Leader of Squad 19, Marco Bodt."

The world stutters and jerks. Time rewinds. He falls.

 

_~x~_

"Let's leave," Jean suddenly says, one day after practice. He thinks it must be desperation setting in. He's tried everything, and he's at the end of his tether. "Let's just desert the Corps and run, I don't care where!"

Marco laughs. "Have you got a fever? I thought you were going to get into the top ten and go to the Military Police. We haven't got that long left. Isn't it going to be great, serving the King?" he smiles, and Jean feels his world shatter around him.

He forces himself to smile instead. "Yeah," he says feebly, his voice cracking around the word. "Marco...if I said I wasn't going to the Military Police, what would you do?"

Those brown eyes look at him endearingly. "That's a weird question," he observes. "But I'd support you. I think you'd be a great Commander. Why? Are you thinking of joining another sector?"

"No." Jean says, shaking his head. He doesn't know why he asked. Marco is Marco, and all he's ever wanted to do is serve the King even if the Military Police is as corrupt as they come. He's not in it for the protection or prestige like Jean was. He's in it because of honour and everything that is good. "I was just wondering."

 

_~x~_

Trost happens. In all of its devastation, it's horror, its misery, Trost happens. He swaps his gear for another one near the beginning of the battle, knowing it will break soon enough and put Marco in danger. He keeps up with him, runs across the rooftops, assists in titan kills. They make it to the gas supply area and Marco tells him for the umpteenth time that he is not strong, and that he would make a great Commander because of that. Jean doesn't try and act surprised this time. He nods and gives Marco his thanks, and Marco smiles for him. He trails after him when they refuel, tries to follow him directly through the air.

And then he loses him. He doesn't even know how. He doesn't look away, doesn't divert his attention. One moment there's a titan coming and the next Marco is gone. He looks around dumbly, shell shocked, heart beating rapidly in his chest. "No," he says out loud, mostly to himself. He can't do this again, won't repeat the entire cycle _again_ only for this to continue. He starts checking the area, scoping it carefully while avoiding titans as best as he can. His equipment won't break, he'll be fine.

And then he hears it, the cry that turns his heart to stone and drops it in his chest like an anchor in the sea. He starts running across the rooftops, looking for the source. "Marco!" he screams, looking around desperately. "Marco, come on, answer me!"

"Jean!" he stops short and leaps off the roof, recognising the street vaguely. It's near his house, he thinks slowly. He glances around and then he sees it, a titan unlike any he's ever seen before lifting Marco up in its large hand.

He freezes. The titan is feminine.

Female titans don't exist.

"Jean!" Marco cries out again and that's all it takes. He sets off running, filled with a strange sense of hope mixed with fear. If it's an abnormal, it might be like Eren, and that means it might be able to understand him. He doesn't know a whole lot about Eren, though, but he _always_ plugs the breach in the wall. Always.

"Put him down!" Jean shouts, firing off his right wire into the nearby building. He uses it to propel him upwards, and then sends the left off into the feminine titan's chest. All he has to do is get to her neck and Marco will be safe. "I'll kill you myself!"

"Jean!" Marco gasps, eyes wide with fear. "She's not a normal titan, she's-!"

He doesn't finish his sentence. The titan's free hand comes up and grabs Jean's right wire. In one moment, he's suspended in midair.

The next, she's swinging it down and he's slamming into the floor.

 

_~x~_

He opens his eyes to Sasha's voice, shakily saying, "He's okay, he's breathing." He tries to sit up, gasping as pain shoots up and down through his chest and in both of his legs. "Stay down!" Sasha says with alarm but he only has that image of the feminine titan lifting Marco up towards its mouth ingrained in his brain. His right arm won't move, and when he glances down at his ruined body he finds it pinned to his chests by the wires from the manoeuvre gear tangled around his torso. He pushes himself up with his undamaged left arm, his nerves screaming with agony. His ribs are cracked, both of his legs are likely broken, but with effort he rolls onto his front and looks up.

There, slumped against the wall of a wrecked building. A half missing, ruined, grotesque body. Rot hasn't set in yet. He's earlier this time.

But he was still too late and Marco probably died screaming his name, thinking he was dead and he had died trying to save him. Once again, Marco had died alone and Jean couldn't do a thing to stop it. He starts dragging himself across the debris ridden street amidst Sasha's alarmed protests. "Marco..." he hisses through gritted teeth. His chest burns, his legs won't respond, but he needs to be over there.

He knows how it ends for Marco. He knows how to fix it all.

There isn't a woman with dead eyes and a clipboard yet, because Jean has changed something. Instead it is a man with horrified eyes and shaking hands. He looks at Jean, this pathetic husk crawling desperately across the floor, and he whispers, "Cadet, did you know him?"

Jean has to rewind. Has to turn it all back. He needs to say the magic words. "The 104th Training Corps..." he forces out through his tight chest. "Leader of Squad 19, Marco Bodt."

Dizziness overcomes him. He slumps forward.

Time stutters and jerks and rewinds.

 

_~x~_

He opens his eyes and he's staring at a familiar ceiling in a familiar bed, in a familiar room listening to familiar sounds. If he sits up and chooses to peer over the side of his bunk, he'll see Eren Jaeger snoring loudly on his bunk and Armin Arlert below him, clutching his pillow. Their features will be childlike, younger, smaller.

Jean instantly sits up, refreshingly free of pain. He looks over the bunk and there Marco is, sleeping soundly. "Marco," he says, "Oi, Marco."

Marco opens his eyes sleepily. "Jean?"

He decides he'll try one last time to stop it from coming to Trost. He's got to try everything. "Let's run away, right here and now. Desert the Corps, make our own lives."

Marco blinks at him, and then rolls over. "Go back to sleep, Jean."

 

_~x~_

They're in the mess hall, and Jean can't help himself. This conversation will be different. "Marco," he says, out of the blue, "I don't want you to die alone, you hear me?"

Marco looks at him as if he's gone mad. "What?"

"But, here's the thing. I don't want to die alone either. I don't want anyone to die alone. So, if it ever comes to a fight, if we're ever in that situation...I want us all to stick together."

Marco's eyebrows furrow. "Are you okay, Jean?"

Jean takes a tentative bite of his food, thinking through his next words carefully. "I'm scared," he says finally. "I'm scared of losing someone and not knowing how they died or knowing they died alone and with no one to help them. I don't want that to happen."

Marco nods slowly. "I guess I get where you're coming from...why all this all of a sudden, Jean?"

Jean shakes his head. "Have you ever heard of a female type titan?"

He has to know. Was it an abnormality? Or something else? Maybe someone else has heard of it. Marco's eyes flick up as he seemingly thinks about it, and then he shakes his head. "Didn't they say in class that they've never seen one before? Why?"

Perhaps it was just an abnormality then. "Don't worry about it." Jean says dismissively. "Just...if we're ever in a fight, we stick together, okay?"

Marco looks at his food, and for a long moment Jean thinks that'll be the end of the conversation. He eats his own, and then Marco turns back, eyes resolute.

"United we stand, divided we fall." Marco says, and that surprises Jean because it's _not_ 'live together, die alone'. "Is that what you mean?"

He thinks through the meaning of the phrase. United we stand. If we stay together, we'll be alright. Divided we fall. If we lose each other, we're done.

"Yeah." Jean nods. "That's exactly what I mean."

 

_~x~_

United we stand, divided we fall. Jean still loses Marco in the crux of the fight, but this time he knows exactly where to go. Marco will not be alone and therefore he will not die.

He runs for the street where Marco will be in minutes. The area is devoid of titans, oddly, but there is one sign of life. He slows, squinting his eyes.

"Annie Leonhardt?" he says, approaching the girl. There's something wrong, but he can't figure it out. She turns rapidly, her eyes wide. It takes him a moment to realise what's so off about her. Her arm is steaming, or rather, what's _left_ of it is. He's seen that before. It's what happens when titans are injured.

It's what happened when Eren came out of the neck of his titan in every timeline before it.

In one horrifying second, everything clicks together. Feminine form titan, Marco's last words to him the time before, the reason he's always found _half_ of Marco instead of nothing. Ordinary titans eat people whole. Abnormal titans...  

"You're a titan," he says before he can stop himself. Then he realises and he staggers back. _Shit._

She starts to walk towards him, and though her face is set her eyes look pained. "I'm sorry," she says, and that's _all_ she says before she suddenly raises her index finger to her mouth and bites down, hard.

One second he's looking at Annie Leonhardt. The next, he's looking at the female titan that swung him to the floor without mercy the last time. Fear floods through him and he reacts on instinct. He has to go for the neck but not let her get his wires. That's what he needs to do.

He fires his first one into the wall far away from her, but it's not enough. She snatches him out of midair and holds him around his chest, her grip warm and tight. "Annie!" he cries, stabbing one of his blades into her fist. "You don't have to do this!"

She's not letting up. He falters and then stops, realising this is it and he's going to die, alone and no one will know how. This is Marco's fate, and he's experiencing it first hand. _Please don't let him come around the corner. Please come save me. No, don't. Please...!_

She raises him higher and he can't stop the terrified tears that leak from his eyes. "I don't want to die," he says without thinking, and he realises belatedly that they're _awful_ last words to have. Jean Kirschstein. A selfish coward even to the end.

His last thought process is a wish.

_Please don't kill Marco this time._

_~x~_

The body is ruined, half missing, rotting, grotesque.

"Cadet! Do you know his name?" the woman with dead eyes asks, her clipboard clutched tight in her white knuckled, clammy hands.

His heart beats fast in his chest, his eyes threatening to leak frightened, desperate tears. This can't be right. This shouldn't be right. This isn't what's supposed to happen. He wasn't _like_ that, to go off and die after everything he said. He clenches his fists. It's _not_ right.

He turns his back on the woman. "No...someone, _someone_ must have seen his last moments." he starts to walk, shock setting in.

"There's a risk of an epidemic." the woman says. "If you know him, you must tell me his name."

He stops short, looks back at the body with horrified numbness.

"The 104th Training Corps..." he says, slowly, his hands shaking. "Jean Kirschstein."

The moment the dreadful words spill from his mouth, a wave of light-headedness hits him. Marco Bodt staggers back, clutching his head, tripping over his own legs. "Cadet?" the woman says, slightly alarmed, but the sensation attacks him again and again and as he steps back his legs go out from under him and he _falls._

The world stutters and jerks like a video tape on rewind. He sees carnage and ruin rewound before his eyes, he watches buildings form again and he sees people who are dead smiling and laughing. He shuts his eyes, lets the world take him.

He doesn't hit the ground.

 

_~x~_

He opens his eyes with a start and he's staring at a familiar slated bunk in a familiar bed, in a familiar room listening to familiar sounds. He sits up and glances beside him to find Armin Arlert clutching his pillow, and he can hear Eren Jaeger snoring loudly on his bunk above him. Their features are childlike, smaller, younger. He gets up tentatively and checks the bed above him. Comfortingly, Jean is asleep up there, his face peaceful and calm.

Maybe it was all a dream, he thinks. He lies back down, shuts his eyes.

He falls asleep with ease.


End file.
